Happy Thanksgiving, The Solo Spirited Holiday

For some time, I’ve been wanting to weigh in on the debate over at Simple Justice about lawyer marketing, such as its role in educating the public, whether the focus on marketing has overtaken the importance of honing our craft as lawyers and the extent to which we permit marketing to pervade everything we do (or in Scott’s infamous words, turn our blogs into a giant info-mercial). All great questions, but not exactly what I’d intended to address in a Thanksgiving post, and so I’ll pass on these topics for later. However, lest you be tempted to treat Thanksgiving as another chance to market (for example, by thanking people with the ulterior motive of getting them to send you more business) then take a look at this older piece that I’ve written on the importance of saying thank you because you mean it.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers and to all of you current and aspiring solos. Like the Pilgrims before us, those of you who are starting, or aspire to start a practice will set out on unfamiliar waters. Some of you leave behind comfortable, though unsatisfying careers, while others have no option but to strike out on our own. All of you face challenges – hard times when business is scarce, learning how to strike alliances with other lawyers (as the Pilgrims did with the Native Americans), handling unfamiliar tasks like practice management or accounting or filing a complaint in a new court and doing it all within the harsh climate of today’s troubled economy. Yet for those of you with a Pilgrim-like spirit, I am confident that you will endure and ultimately prosper in this new world.

For those who choose to brave this journey, I wish you safe passage over the year ahead. For those who have already crossed over, I remind you to take the time and celebrate and savor what you have created. Thanks for reading!